It has been interesting and
informative to join my friends to watch and learn from our elected state and federal officials. For the most part, we liked
what we heard.

The GOP is on the attack, as it tends to be when out of power. And the GOP is never better
than when it is rediscovering and freshly embracing its core values, especially those that resonate with voters in the Valley.

Avoiding debt, embracing constitutional rule of law and living and working free from arbitrary constraints and
regulatory interference by Washington are the most positive talking points. But actions speak louder than words, so we are
pushing our incumbents to ACT!

Most glaring is the 6th District incumbent congressman who talks at length
about repealing and ending Obamacare, particularly on the lines of a fundamental reading of the Constitution. The incumbent
seems to be interested in pushing back against Environmental Protection Agency overreach.

Yet for a person
who represents four of the top five agricultural-producing counties in Virginia, he made no mention of agricultural issues.
Given his work on our behalf against the EPA, it was surprising that he has not yet proposed the elimination of ethanol subsidies
and mandates — a freedom of choice concern that would save tax dollars as well as reduce expenses for our cattle, dairy
and poultry producers.

He talked at length about his recurring proposals to eliminate the ability of the
federal government to borrow, and the evils of the federal debt. Quoting Jefferson on the dangers of public debt, and the
possibility that it would make slaves of us all, this part of his talk was powerful and well received. What wasn’t immediately
apparent was that the incumbent has repeatedly voted for all the numerous recent continuing resolutions to keep the out-of-control
federal government running.

In discussing the dangers of debt and federal spending, the incumbent should
have proudly mentioned that he became one of 101 GOP co-sponsors of Ron Paul’s Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2011.
He did mention his proposed federal balanced budget legislation, but such legislation would have no teeth as long as the Federal
Reserve can generate more fiat money for government expenditures on demand.

Speaking of the Federal Reserve,
I doubt that Thomas Jefferson would have endorsed such a scheme perpetrated on the American people. Jefferson warned against
a central bank of the United States, saying, “I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than
standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity in the name of funding, is but swindling
futurity on a large scale.”

Now we see that a Federal Reserve unaudited and unrestrained only serves
to help big banks around the world at the expense of average Americans struggling to pay mortgages and deal with food and
fuel inflation.

The incumbent had a great line that almost generated applause. He said, “We will not raise the federal
debt ceiling … unless we get concessions.” So it will be interesting to see how the incumbent will spin
the theatrical debate fawning courage to cut up $38.5 Billion out of a budget which during the eight day debate saw the deficit
grow by $54.1 Billion according to the Bureau of Public Debt.

Finally I heard the word “liberty”
come up and was ready to be inspired. But once again actions tell a different story. This incumbent continues to allow unprecedented
federal spending and executive mandates including ethanol subsidies that restrict and constrain individuals, private enterprise
and farmers. These are issues that voters in the sixth district are telling me they want to see corrected.

Where the incumbent congressman finally convinced me that he is too comfortable in his big spending, big government political
home for nearly twenty years was his willingness to consistently vote for legal permanence of the entire Patriot Act, including
the three controversial articles of the Act which directly violate the Constitution, that most supreme and wise law of the
land.

After the event, we asked him directly about his support for the Patriot Act, legislation that admittedly
he and the rest of Congress never read when originally passed in late 2001. He then became upset, and abruptly asked us to
show proof that the FISA warrants were being used on American citizens. We have seen the evidence. So how is it that an incumbent
with a massive staff and millions in campaign dollars cannot obtain this documentation? Simple - he chooses not to. Reason:
his campaign donors benefit from his looking the other way.

In that moment, it was easy to forget that our
10-term incumbent is also a lawyer. You would think he would find words to defend his actions. Oh, but this is how business
is done in Washington. Let's hope the people in the sixth finally say enough! Words matter, but actions and effectiveness
matter more.

We’ll keep listening.

LTC (R) Karen Kwiatkowski, PhD, is an educator
and farmer from Mount Jackson. She writes a regular column for lewrockwell.com and is exploring a run for congress in 2012.

The
federal government is broke, yet it continues to spend our money, tax our children and borrow from the future for things
that we don’t want, can’t afford, and don’t need – all without our consent!The
House is the constitutional holder of the pursestrings – yet our incumbents are more interested in playing kick the
can than solving real fiscal and governance problems.Washington and media voices often forget two things:1) government and its dependent contractors consume unreasonable amounts of capital and produce nothing of sustained
value, and 2) private enterprise, small businesses and farmers consume reasonable amounts
of capital and are responsible for every necessary product, each new technology harnessed, and every real job created in this
country.

"End
the welfare state, at both national and state levels. That will phase out both legal and illegal immigration. Take away the
incentive.

"Reduce the flow of funds to federal and state social service agencies. They’ll figure
out the rest. The current emphasis on national IDs, national databases, enforcement and border fencing is like
shutting the barn door after the horses have bolted, and it has already led to major expense, large growth in the federal
bureaucracy aimed at enforcing immigration concerns, and almost unbelievable corruption."

***
Karen's Legislative Initiative ***

My efforts, proposed legislation
and my votes for liberty, private enterprise, farmers and real people – and against parasitic political class –
will work to:

·End unnecessary military occupations, close unneeded military bases, stop buying unneeded and expensive
weapons systems from a bloated and non-competitive defense industry.

·Reduce government spending by first
auditing, and soon, eliminating the Federal Reserve, as the lender of first and last resort for an undisciplined Congress.

·Eliminate duplicative and unconstitutional agencies, regulatory
boards, departments and counterproductive programs across the federal government, sending the resources and authority to the
states where they belong.

·Fight for and defend the Constitution and its first ten amendments
from any infringement, no matter how slight, called for by any individual, organization, or governing body.Period.

·I will be a devoted and active member
of the Liberty Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives.

This speech was part of a panel sponsored
by the Future of Freedom Foundation, Campaign for Liberty and the Ladies of Liberty Alliance (LOLA) held on February 20th
at the 2010 CPAC. The panel presentation was titled "Why Real Conservatives Are Against the War on Terror."

February 23, 2010

The phrase "war on terror" has been used to justify trillions of dollars in spending,
hundreds of thousands of new government positions, and thousands of new government contracts. At the same time, the "war
on terror" has produced very little in terms of new technology or enhanced security, has vastly increased the degree
of national centralization, and has created many new permanent trees and branches in the gnarled world of federal and state
institutions.

The Congressional Research Service reported in September 2009 the cost of the "War on Terror"
since 9/11 at almost one trillion dollars. But they looked only at the cost of the three military operations launched in response
to 9/11. They counted only the war in Afghanistan (9 years running), the war in Iraq (7 years running), and the overall effort
to secure US military installations around the world – not our borders at home, but our forward deployed empire.

While it is very costly, in both dollars and in terms of rule of law, the war on terror is not a real war, in the
sense that conservatives understand it. Yes, our nation was assaulted, and on 9/11, our nation was undefended and vulnerable.
Our very expensive armed forces and our very expensive intelligence apparatus failed to prevent or to predict what happened
on 9/11. A conservative reaction would have been to assess the situation from the perspective of what we had done or not done,
as much as to seek to avenge the attack. A wise and thoughtful response would have been to unleash a criminal investigation,
at home and internationally, and to pursue the perpetrators, as we examine the institutional failures and policies that made
our country vulnerable.

Instead, even though we had a so-called conservative president, we did not proceed as conservatives.
We did not hold accountable or fire anyone in our government, or our defense and intelligence institutions. We did not closely
examine our own foreign policy or our extensive intelligence and military activities overseas, particularly the Middle East.
We did not even devote sufficient time and energy to investigating the crimes committed and the people behind those crimes.
Instead, our so-called conservative president, with the backing of so-called conservative people, reacted pretty much as that
other party we have been rightfully criticizing here at this conference.

What we are talking about today is our
reaction to 9/11 – because that is really what the war on terror has been – a reaction, not a strategy.

This reaction, like most poorly thought-out reactions, has been anything but conservative.

Furthermore, it has
led to conditions and changes in this country that are anything but those a true conservative would desire or hope for: Massive
growth in spending, new permanent and centralized government institutions, and worst of all, an incredibly stupid militarization
of the pursuit of terror.

It is the stupidity in the strategy that I want to briefly review. And to do this, no
one here needs to understand the least bit about military history, tactics and strategy. You do not need to know about the
Chinese general Sun Tzu, because apparently no one leading the Pentagon is reading him.

Sun Tzu understood that
understatement and deception is necessary in war.

He said, "Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness.
Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate."

Instead, our approach has been to almost randomly identify countries and governments and very publicly, go after them.
The only mystery of our military and foreign policy since 2001 is in the minds of the American people, who do not understand
why the war isn’t won yet, and why the enemy seems to be expanding, getting smarter, and hating us more.

Sun
Tzu said, "If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril." He was right about that
– but in fact you wouldn’t know it from the obscene confidence and outright idiocy put out by the Pentagon, and
eagerly embraced by two presidents, one a so-called conservative, the other, a left-wing socialist.

We –
as conservatives – ought to care about getting back to an old kind of normal – not creating a new normal of unconstitutional
government, unsupportable debt, and endless war. We should want victory in the "War on Terror" but understand that
victory must include a return to small government republicanism. Sun Tzu wrote, "He who knows when he can fight and when
he cannot, will be victorious."

But as I said, those creating, pursuing, advertising and selling the so-called
War on Terror have not read Sun Tzu, and cannot be bothered.

Von Clausewitz is another strategist we study in the
military finishing schools. One thing Clausewitz knew, that conservatives also know – is that, "The first, the
supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish . . . the kind
of war on which they are embarking." But instead, we are still debating the question of "What is this war on terror?"
More and more we are asking, why isn’t it working, and when will it end.

Instead of Sun Tzu and von Clausewitz
our strategy has been more theatrics than tactics, and running on a script written by those who stand to benefit from more
government, and more government spending, than those Americans who are fundamentally conservative and who in their hearts,
do value the Constitution – which is to say – the majority of Americans.

From a Pentagon standpoint,
it was fortunate that the Pentagon was one of the 9/11 targets. Had the Pentagon not been targeted, and had it emerged unscathed
on 9/11, it is likely that serious questions would have been asked about why the premier and best-funded military, with the
best and most highly funded intelligence agencies in the world, was a blind paralyzed sitting duck on 9/11.

Instead,
no serious or probing questions were asked about the appropriateness of our massive military-industrial complex. After 9/11
the so-called conservatives in charge – instead of taking wise counsel – did what any decent Democrat would do.
They threw unlimited piles of money at a largely undefined and misunderstood problem.

Some in the GOP are still
wondering why the Tea Party movement evolved. Didn’t people already have a conservative political party representing
their interests? Well, the GOP promotion of the war on terror using big contracts and bigger government, trampling the constitution,
all in the name of fear and empire – none of this approach was conservative.

Beyond being anything but conservative,
the war on terror as we have conducted it since 2001 is simply not succeeding. In many of our overseas battlefields, we are
creating and growing new terrorists, and smarter terrorists. We are increasingly exposing our own weaknesses in terms of occupation
and counterinsurgency, and even as we institutionally learn from our mistakes, it is always too slow, always after the fact.

We – as conservatives, no less – seem to be supporting a vague and extremely Clintonesque policy of global
nation building. We keep hoping that putting another one of our crooked guys in charge of a country will work, and we keep
hoping that military and economic blackmail can keep the locals in line. That’s just idiotic.

It may be that
our military policy is not designed to reduce terror at all, but is instead simply designed to evolve hand-in-hand with the
so-called "war on terror," in order to maximize the opportunity for growth of American intelligence and security
institutions. Permanent institutional growth.

Many predictions about the next decade have been made in the past
weeks. One thing not predicted for 2010 is a reduction of American forces, or fewer American interferences and entanglements
overseas. No one is predicting the ending of America’s illegal wars, or even the ending of a front in just one of the
illegal wars.

Curiously, government spokesmen are aware that this is exactly what Americans want, and are beginning
to pander. Case in point is JCS Chairman Admiral Mullen on The Daily Show last month discussing how we are coming out of Iraq
in 18 months, and how the US military is 40% smaller than it was at the end of the Cold War.

Mullen represents
his case well, but unfortunately he was lying. He is lying about leaving Iraq – even Obama has stated that a minimum
of 50,000 American troops will permanently remain in that foreign country. He is also lying about the size of the military.

In 1988, about a year before the end of the Cold War, a Congressional Research Service chronology of military spending
put the DoD take at $451 billion (in 2005 dollars). In 2009, DoD got $10 billion more, with a budget of $460.5 billion (in
2005 dollars). The real military budget in 2009 was larger, not smaller, than at the end of the Cold War. But there’s
more, namely the modern habit of funding any actual wars the DoD may be fighting through separate supplemental Congressional
appropriations and authorizations.

Admiral Mullen also mentioned on the Daily Show that our uniformed military
was smaller today than at the end of the Cold War. It’s true, we do have about 750 thousand fewer troops than we did
at the end of the Cold War. However, for the past 20 years, we have been outsourcing all kinds of formerly uniformed specialties
and subspecialities. As one conservative economist correctly wonders,

"…was [the outsourcing] really
about saving money? Or was it a way to ramp up the effective size of the fighting force without having to institute a draft
or some other means of increase the size of the military (e.g. increasing pay substantially)? And perhaps sending a few, more
than a few actually, bucks in certain directions?"

The future – especially the future for people who
love and value American liberty – is in danger. It is in danger in part because we did not pursue, and are not today
pursuing, a conservative approach to reducing anti-American terrorism and ensuring the guilty were indeed punished for their
acts.

After 9/11 – a ruthless, tragic, terrible event, burned into our minds and our hearts – the United
States had alternatives. We could have, as we had done in so many other cases of terrorism, pursued the criminals through
the system of law enforcement. This would have meant a slower process, a process that would have been less emotional and less
political, and would have required international police and intelligence cooperation. After 9/11, we had the sympathy of the
world, and strong offers and guarantees of their support. It would have taken time – although in retrospect, this approach
would have taken far less time, less money and destroyed fewer lives and livelihoods than what we really did. A conservative
approach would have saved trillions of dollars. It would have educated Americans on the rule of law and the Constitution,
rather than blinding them to it. And a conservative approach, because it cares about history and culture and community, would
have ensured that Americans more deeply understood terrorism, and how to prevent it. Instead, we are repeatedly lied to by
our government, on everything, but particularly on the real lack of success, the real cost and the extreme risk of our ongoing
and endless "War on Terror."

Rahm Emmanuel has famously said, "you never want to let a crisis go
to waste," and he is right, from a government’s standpoint. I hope that from a conservative’s perspective,
Rahm’s words are an abomination. But in fact, looking at the policies of the Bush and Cheney administration regarding
terrorism, with Obama continuing them enthusiastically, I am beginning to have doubts as to whether conservatives in this
country really understand what it means to be conservative.

Had our government not seized the opportunity that
the 9/11 crisis presented, and had the Bush Administration spent that political capital on a serious legal and criminal approach
to catching and punishing the 9/11 terrorists – by now, almost nine years later – in the very worst case scenario,
we would be in the same place we are today. Lots of bad guys picked up, some convicted in trials, others held with trials
pending. Certainly, many people would have been released, as we have done with a good number of those who had been held without
charge or evidence in Guantanamo. Best case, this whole episode would be behind us, and the money not spent on security might
have gone to reduce the deficit or support tax cuts.

Had we taken the conservative fork in the road back in 2001,
we would not have enraged other nations, insulted entire cultures, violated our own Constitution and sacrificed on a bloody
altar what we like to put forth as American honor. We would be living in a world where our 1.4 trillion-dollar debt ceiling
could be reduced, not raised. We would be living in a world without an overgrown defense and intelligence structure, with
no blurring of lines between civilian law enforcement and the military. We would be living in a world where, having not killed
women and children, not having interfered with the domestic politics and trade policies of third-world countries in far away
places, and having not destroyed our onetime reputation as a free nation – we would be clearly safer from terror aimed
against us.

But the United States is led by a media and power elite that is, in fact, not conservative. It is instead
vested in doing exactly what it has been doing, growing in power and increasing its take from the national till. For these
agencies, the war on terror is working just fine.

How might we, as conservatives today, really begin to fight terrorism?
First, get a Secretary of State who speaks for the founding father’s preferred policy of free trade with all and entangling
alliances with none.

Second, if a secretary of war is required, appoint one who will make his sole mission the
security of the United States, rather than the security and continued expansion of the defense industrial establishment.

Third, conservatives, of all people, have the responsibility to understand both rule of law, and to understand our
own American history, both the good and the bad – and keep the light of freedom burning at home. This means we have
to be leading the charge at home to reduce our illegal empire abroad for reasons both financial and constitutional.

Instead, of course, the Republican Party has become identified with big government, empire, excess spending, and overpriced
and counterproductive defense strategy. As the American people wake up to this reality, they will naturally reject the philosophy
that is behind the modern GOP approach.

If the GOP intends to remain relevant, it must deliver. The nearly decade-long
experiment in government growth called "the war on terror" has been a cruel joke that history will rightfully blame
on the Republican Party. It’s not working, and conservatives – as well as libertarians and independents and democrats
– can all see that. But only old-style conservatives and libertarians are truly in a position to offer a reasonable
alternative. And that alternative is to energize real conservatism in our defensive strategy and foreign affairs, and to rediscover
the sound advice of Sun Tzu, von Clausewitz, and more than ever, our founding fathers.

###

LRC columnist
Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D., a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, has written on defense issues with a libertarian perspective
for MilitaryWeek.com, hosts the call-in radio show American Forum, and blogs occasionally for Huffingtonpost.com and Liberty
and Power.